Duminică (Sunday)

Apart from the beginning and end, Sînziana Nicola’s 2013 short Duminică takes place entirely in a car as, we eventually discover, a brother and sister are driving to a hospital, where a relative is dying.  Their emotional distance is signalled right at the beginning when she waits outside his block, smoking, and their greetings are perfunctory.  Much of the journey is taken up by the sister, for something to say, telling her brother about a strange experience she had when she went to an interview at ten in the evening and tried to take a taxi afterwards.

A man got in who neither she nor the driver knew, and when he suggested he take her home and she objected he became aggressive, leading to a row in the street.  When she took another cab, he and his friends followed behind, shouting.  As she haltingly tells her tale, her brother disapproves, obviously thinking she handled the situation badly and naively underestimated the danger she could have been in.  He blames her and her 'big mouth' rather than the people with whom she had the run-in.  Exasperated, he wonders who would be holding an interview at 10 o’clock, and asks why she didn’t call him.

Her response is that it was 'an unconventional events company', the interview a waste of time, and she can manage her own affairs.  Determined to finish the story, she becomes heated defending herself, one of those situations in which whatever is said is going to irritate to the other person.  Annoyed, he won’t allow her to smoke and turns off the music she puts on.  They subside, tired of the friction and an uneasy silence follows as he steers them through heavy city traffic.  He asks her for chocolate, which he had previously refused, a symbol of their truce.  We leave them standing outside the hospital entrance, smoking to postpone the inevitable.

This Sunday is definitely not a day of rest.  In less than a quarter of an hour we have been shown a situation common among siblings having little in common but bound together by family, so obliged to spend time in each other’s company.  This is an especial difficulty for the younger one, who risks being patronised.  Simply shot from the back seat, the viewer’s interpretation arises from their tone and body language as much as the words, signalling years of the big brother despairing of his undisciplined sister (tellingly he wears a seatbelt but she does not), and sister wondering whether she will ever be taken seriously.

This was Sînziana Nicola’s first film as director, and it won her a prize at the Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expended Media.  It is available on Cinepub:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k163TPVFga4&list=PLn0Jy9I2VIyRdOlNnOsu8TCaUSUDHrwzP&index=53&t=0s

Adriana-Ioana Cosma

Copyright Adriana-Ioana Cosma

The July/August Journal of the Royal Photographic Society carries an article on half a dozen graduates who have been following BA or MA photography courses at British universities.  One of these is Romanian Adriana-Ioana Costa, who has been studying for a BA in photography at Edinburgh Napier University.  The project featured in the double-page spread (pp. 518-19) is Little Red One, about her grandfather: his nickname was Roşiştea, given by his mother when he was born as he had red hair, and he was known as Red in the village.  Pre-1989 he was a farmer, and afterwards an independent smallholder in Vărai, a village in the Maramureș.  He lived with his wife and mother-in-law (‘whose spirituality combined Orthodox-Christian rites with old pagan rituals’).  Cosma lived with them until the age of 5, and visited during holidays afterwards.

She started Little Red One in 2019 as she realised she had not photographed her late grandmother much and was grateful she could still photograph her grandfather.  Her efforts became part of her BA submission, though it is as much about the village, where she has noticed a growing tension in the past 20 years between modernisation and a desire not to change.  Like many places it is suffering depopulation, with Cosma told in January 2020 that only about 100 people were now living there (down from 275 in the Census of 2011), and no babies born for years.  Of those left, 42 were widowed and living alone, of which Cosma’s grandfather was one.  Yet Cosma says that while it is sad to see signs of decline, there is hope also, with the people keeping going and maintaining their faith.

Little Red One is one of the projects on Cosma’s website, but the others are not specifically about Romania.  However, her Instagram page has a wider selection of Romanian photographs.  There are some of the landscape around Vărai, but many capture still life, those moments suggesting permanence but that we know outside the photograph hold within them the seeds of decay.  Her grandfather appears in some of the photographs, but surprisingly never a close portrait (his red hair apparently gone).  It would be nice to see more of Vărai to have a rounded view, though the overwhelming feeling of these is indeed of decline.  There is more life on display in pictures from the 2019 Marmația winter festival, rural folk traditions transplanted to an urban setting.  They put one in mind of the Moldovan winter celebrations depicted in Masquerade and in Felicia Simion’s ethnographies, a more systematic attempt to record customs and folklore across rural Romania.

Bucharest Tales, by Lidia Vianu (ed.)

Published in 2014 by Contemporary Literature Press (the online publishing house of the University of Bucharest), Bucharest Tales is part of the New Europe Writers series, the aim of which is to collect stories and poems relating to a particular city (others are Tales from Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Ljubljana).  New Europe Writers’ aim is to ‘capture the spirit of a united Europe.’  Much of the editorial work and translation was carried out by the University’s MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text.

Editor Lidia Vianu describes Bucharest Tales as ‘a collection of stories and poems about old and new Bucharest, written by Romanian writers of two generations, and by foreigners who have come to know Romania and its capital,’ though while it provides a connecting thread, despite the title Bucharest does not always appear.  The book presents a mix of new voices and well-established writers such as Dan Lungu and Mircea Cărtărescu, and as there are over 50 contributions in about 260 pages most are short.  Some are extracts from longer works, such as Mike Ormsby’s chapters from Never Mind the Balkans, Here’s Romania.  Where appropriate the Romanian and an English translation are presented in parallel.  Contributions were not always originally written in Romanian: quite a few were written in English, and a couple are translated from other languages.

With so many voices there is bound to be a multiplicity of takes on Romania.  If there is an overarching theme it is interrogating past history and the changes it has wrought: these include the meaning of independence, the shift from monarchy to fascism to communism, then capitalism and the EU; and the processes of demolishing and rebuilding both society and the physical structure of the city.  Modernisation is considered a mixed blessing, bringing with it corruption, wide disparities in wealth, heavy traffic, homogeneous buildings with a loss of style, fringe beliefs – in general the atomisation of society.  City life can be surreal, and wry humour used as a coping mechanism.  There is some nostalgia for the old times, when people knew where they were even if they experienced shortages and less personal autonomy.

It is always valuable to be exposed to different perspectives, but Bucharest Tales would have been improved by including more Romanian writing and less by non-Romanians.  The latter may be valid as a depiction of Bucharest, but it does not always have the feel of an insider’s lived experience.  A few of the contributors, judging by their biographical details, have had little connection with Romania, making one wonder to what extent the selection was based on easy availability of material and permission issues.  Even with those qualifications, the prose aspects are generally engaging, though some of the poems feel weak in comparison.  Nearly all the writers included were still alive at the time the anthology was compiled, which reinforces the contemporary feel and Makes Bucharest Tales a useful window on that contradictory city.

București NonStop / Bucharest NonStop

București NonStop, directed by Dan Chișu (2015), intercuts a number of stories over the course of a night, linked very loosely by a small 24-hour convenience shop (the titular NonStop) opposite a block of flats in a dingy part of Bucharest.  The shopkeeper, Achim, watches people drift by, his cynical exterior hiding a compassionate heart.  Unlike in Clerks (1994) the shop is not the focus, though one suspects the influence of the name Quick Stop Groceries in Kevin Smith’s film on NonStop, and Achim’s back-to-front baseball cap echoes that worn by Silent Bob.

The heart of the story is the block itself and a handful of its residents.  A prostitute who wants to leave the city to see her child is driven to one last trick before she goes to the railway station without giving her pimp his 50% cut.  A pair of low-level criminals who scam motorists by staging accidents have to charge their battery before setting off.  A taxi driver who comes to collect the prostitute lends them his cables.  While waiting for her at her appointment he suspects her of intending to skip and phones the intimidating pimp, leading to violence.

A cheating boyfriend tries to get his girl back but cannot get into the building to express his contrition, despite his best efforts; his mobile’s battery has expired and at his wits’ end he begs a reluctant Achim for help.  In her flat the girlfriend is being consoled by, and torn between, two friends, one of whom thinks she should dump him, the other arguing he should be given a second chance.  The errant lover throws stones at her window, but some fall against the window of the flat below in which, the best realised of the strands, an elderly couple bicker, nagging away at old hurts.

Through all this, Achim is a stable point in the little shop, acting different parts as circumstances require: offering advice, berating or helping those who pass before his window.  As dawn breaks the stories are resolved, for better or worse (with poetic justice in the case of the scammers, reconciliation for the estranged lovers, an act of contrition towards the prostitute by the taxi driver, and an abrupt conclusion to the old couple’s long marriage).  In the final shots the camera looks down on NonStop far below as life continues around it, the new day promising fresh dramas on this small stage.

For some reason the film is billed as a comedy, but while it has its amusing moments the general tone is compassionate but unsentimental.  The one unredeemed character is the pimp, a boorish, bullying, hypocritical family man who abandons a wedding to exercise his power over a helpless woman.  Otherwise, in its unflinching look at characters who have not always behaved well one finds selfishness and sadness, but in some of them also kindness, generosity, and a desire for connection.

The subtitled film is available on Cinepub.

Masquerade/Mascarada (2001)

Masquerade is a 52-minute film directed by Cornel Gheorghiță documenting winter celebrations in Moldova.  Rituals with deep roots in the culture of the region, though echoing rich folk traditions elsewhere in Europe, they celebrate the end of the old year and the promise of rebirth, a reaffirmation of life over the persistence of death.  They provide a sense of control when confronted with the unknown, such as fear the dead wander the earth in the darkest days of the year.  A sensitive narration locates the festival within the broader context of memory, to emphasise the way it offers a thread of continuity which helps to bind local identity.

Villagers dress in outlandish costumes and wear frightening masks that would scare off Death himself.  There are symbolic representations of different types of people and animals, notably the goat and the bear.  Youngsters dress in bear skins, a band plays enthusiastically and loudly.  Drink may be taken (we are told part of this region was once called Bacovia, from the Latin ‘Bacchus’ and ‘via’, ‘the path of Bacchus’).  The procession of young males makes sure to visit the homes of unmarried females.  Everyone has a high old time.

In many places these customs have disappeared in the face of urbanisation, industrialisation and the fragmentation of communities, and when the procession is seen winding through city streets it looks incongruously domesticated: these are profound mysteries that should be confined to the pastoral landscape.  But wherever they are performed, it is possible to see the enthusiastic participation by villagers in pagan festivities elements of which may not have been unfamiliar to the Dacians.  Staid Christianity takes a back seat.

Does this harking back to the past have a future though?  To the urban eye the events can seem unnervingly alien, the energy involved even aggressive (and the slaughter of a pig is disturbing), but one would like to think the enthusiasm of the participants, including the children, is an indication that, however much traditional ways of living are diluted by modernity, these customs will continue for as long as the villages remain populated.

However, it would be interesting for a comparison with the situation now, two decades after Cornel Gheorghiță filmed on the streets of rural Moldova, to see if that is the case.  The musicians and craftsmen all look rather old in the tooth and there is no guarantee their skills will be passed down to a new generation.  One also wonders how these ceremonies are faring elsewhere in the region.

The biggest danger is probably depopulation by young people in search of a better life elsewhere, breaking the cultural chain.  It would be a shame if these traditions were lost, but much of their power comes from the exuberance contrasting with the dullness of routine daily life, and these days such a life is not the inevitability, nor necessarily quite as dull, as it once was.  Whatever the fate of the old practices, this is a beautiful, if stark, film, and a valuable ethnographic record.

The film is available on the Cinepub platform.

Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania, by Mike Ormsby

British expat Mike Ormsby’s Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania, copyrighted 2015 (though apparently first published in Bucharest in 2008 and with an acknowledgements page dated 2012, so who knows), consists of a series of vignettes exploring facets of Romanian life.  As a journalist he knows how to get those he meets to open up, and he is always amiable and interested.  A lot of his material results from conversations with cabbies (the taxi being his preferred mode of transport), and his wily self-serving building manager in Bucharest is also a good source of anecdotes.

Ormsby comes across many kind and warm-hearted people and has close friendships, but while he has huge affection for the country he is conscious of its flaws.  He wryly recounts the petty annoyances he experiences every day, finding that often personal respect, and respect for social and legal institutions, are in short supply.  There is selfishness and philistinism, toleration of squalor and discomfort, and a relaxed attitude to animal welfare standards.  Naturally there are plenty of brushes with bureaucracy, shamelessly exhibiting corruption and inefficiency.  Instances of terrible driving crop up regularly.  Ordinary Romanians are fully aware of the defects but cannot see a way to change the situation, so shrug and get on with life as best they can.

On the other hand, Ormsby finds much to admire about the country.  In particular he shows the Carpathians to be breathtakingly beautiful.  He has travelled widely, including stints in Africa, so he does not view Romania from a narrow perspective but rather with a cosmopolitan eye.  Despite his criticisms, it says something for his love of the place that he has stayed on, though he moved from Bucharest to Transylvania where he lives with his Romanian wife.

The tone remains light even when he is clearly exasperated by what he encounters every day, but you sense frustration life is not better this long after 1989.  These snapshots suggest that at least at the time of writing the old mindset still lingered, and while there are hints in the book that things are improving, it is a slow process.  Hopefully in the not too distant future Ormsby’s dispassionate snapshots will read like an historical depiction of a vanished past.

Captives, by Norman Manea

Captives (1970) was Norman Manea’s first novel, written in opaque prose that mirrored the difficulties of coming to terms with everyday reality in a repressive society, and it makes no concessions to the reader.  The novel tracks life in post-war Romania, with its legacy of trauma, omnipresent surveillance and lack of trust, its petty bureaucracy, the fear of falling foul of a regime which considers private life to be its business, the unreliability of surface appearances, and lack of autonomy.  Romania is depicted as a fractured place that had spun from fascism to communism, always at the behest of larger, stronger powers.  Survival means accommodation, even when this entails hypocrisy, an effort unfortunately resulting in psychic damage.  A key motif is the necessity of amnesia to be able to cope with the present.

The narrative is divided into three sections, ‘She’, ‘You’, and ‘I’, and follows three characters who collectively reflect Romania’s recent history and demonstrate the dismissive way the individual is treated.  ‘She’ is Monica Smântănescu, a struggling French and piano teacher frustrated by the rudeness of her clients.  She refers to Handel’s Chaconne in G Major, a piece comprising continuous variations, which symbolises the circular nature of her life and those of others who are trapped and not able to develop.  ‘You’ is the daughter of a Romanian army officer, Captain Zubcu, who fought for the Nazis and returns suffering from PTSD.  He cannot free himself from his experiences, possibly including war crimes, and commits suicide by throwing himself into a vat of liquid metal.  His daughter experiences extreme grief, plus the pain of a broken love affair with the narrator.

‘I’, the narrator, is an engineer looking back on his early political activities, his mind eventually unravelling after fruitlessly attempting to do what is required of him by the state.  There is a suggestion he is a Jewish Holocaust survivor, though this is not made explicit.  He describes his childhood years, and his extreme adherence to the party, his political orthodoxy more to demonstrate a sense of superiority than the result of ideological inclination.  As a member of the Pioneer Organisation he is keen to root out incorrect opinions, particularly his friend Sebastian Caba’s.  Later Caba becomes his boss at the engineering company.

The three sections are not discrete but shift and blend, throwing up connections which may or may not be correct.  The oblique narrative spirals round in addressing social conditions and their psychological impact, forming a hermetic container reflecting airless times that feel damp, grimy and stressful.  We can never be sure who is a reliable narrator and we may read about the same event from differing perspectives.  If people cannot be honest with themselves, how can they be honest with others?  The result is a fracture of personality, reflected in the novel’s style.  Social interactions are low and dishonest and the appropriate response to an absurd situation is absurd behaviour.  Whatever the differences in the three characters’ experiences, they are all captives, both externally through the political repression circumscribing the citizen’s rights, but also internally, by consenting to it.

Manea’s introduction to the 2015 English translation supplies some background to the novel’s creation.  It was intended as a gauntlet thrown down to the regime: far from embodying the values of the New Socialist Man, his characters would be depicted more realistically as ‘vulnerable, weak, and defeated individuals’, ‘wounded outsiders.’  It is a helplessness reinforced by the use of the passive voice, with agency often difficult to assign, thereby becoming diffuse and externalised.  Manea admits that the experimental form he adopted is challenging and was influenced by the Nouveau Roman (presumably including the emphasis on the fallibility of memory), but justifies it by citing Faulkner’s observation that a writer should be judged by risks taken.  He refers to Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, with ‘additional local ambiguities, corruption, double-talk, and double-dealing.’

Translator Jean Harris’s afterword outlines the challenges she faced, notably the novel’s allusive language to describe ‘unhinged’ characters ‘cut loose from their moorings’, making the meaning sometimes impossible to pin down, and Manea’s tendency to avoid the use of pronouns.  She notes that some things are not said outright but hinted at, such as references to Jews, and survivor guilt influencing behaviour.  Significantly a very young Manea and his family were imprisoned in a concentration camp in Transnistria during the war.

Captives is a difficult read (Manea states he has made minor edits to the new edition for clarity, so heaven knows what the original was like) and it is remarkable the novel passed the censors, so far is it from socialist realism.  There may not have been anything specific the authorities considered subversive, but the cumulative effect is to show an oppressive (in its different senses) world off-kilter and unhealthy, creating alienation in its victims.  In a state that suppressed overt criticism, such indirectly expressed dissident writings were the best those who questioned the legitimacy of the regime’s behaviour could hope for, but Manea transcended the limitations to achieve a memorable, if frequently confusing, work of fiction.

Felicia Simion

Copyright Felicia Simion

Bucharest-based photographer Felicia Simion features in The Royal Photographic Society’s April 2020 Journal ‘In Focus’ section (p. 228), with a photograph of a nativity-themed play (which I notice is slightly cropped) taken in Breb.  It is accompanied by a brief interview discussing her project ethnographies, charting aspects of rural Romanian folklore and customs which are gradually disappearing.

She revealed that the idea arose during her study of cultural anthropology, ethnology and folklore, when she decided she was less interested in the past than in how such customs interact with a changing culture.  The result is a fascinating insight into longstanding traditions while conveying a sense of their fragility in the face of modernity (a tension perhaps exemplified by the child wearing a Scream mask).

Simion has said in interviews elsewhere that the desire to become a photographer originated in her discovery of the Magnum agency at the age of 13.  Although still only in her mid-twenties, she has already produced a wide range of images in both colour and black and white, has gained a huge number of awards, and been widely exhibited and published.  She balances commercial work (book covers, fashion) with documentary and art photography.

As well as in Romania, where the accompanying text on her website describes with affection the village in which she grew up and her relatives living there, she has photographed in France, South America, and surprisingly on the Bluebell Line in Sussex.  Just as easily her camera can turn inwards, as when her body in pregnancy became her subject.  She is comfortable with both realism and fantasy, sometimes photographing herself in colourful body suits which render ordinary locations uncanny, but has a particular talent for portraiture, especially women’s faces.

It’s a shame the RPS could not have afforded Simion more space to showcase her versatility but the piece does include a link to her website, which should widen her audience still further.

 

Update 10 September 2022:

‘Photographer Suffering From Postpartum Depression Uses Her Camera to Find Herself Again [Interview]’

A short interview with Felicia Simion appeared on the My Modern Met website, dated 29 August 2022.  Staff editor Sara Barnes asked her about how photography had performed a healing function in her recovery from postpartum depression.  Feeling alienated from the countryside at home, she took herself off to Iceland for the project which became Rewired (2022) and featured Simion entangled in yards of woolen yarn – red, yellow and blue – a soft warm curved body contrasting with the hard cold angular, but beautiful, terrain.

Despite cutting an isolated figure, dwarfed by her surroundings, she says the act of tying herself to the bleak landscape made her feel alive.  It was a healing experience, though one might characterise it more as shock therapy, the uncomfortable act of physically linking herself to the natural world acting to refresh her relationship with it.  It may not be the sort of treatment that is for everyone, but it worked for her, and resulted in a memorable set of images.

Asked to describe her work, she replied it is ‘Eclectic. Real and surreal at the same time,’ and Rewired, the title of which says it all, accurately fulfils that description.  She mentioned at the end that her next project will concern environmental issues in a southern Romanian village, proof that she is once again at home in the countryside of her homeland after her sojourn in a place that could not be more different.

Simion talks about Rewired on her website.  She is also running a project in which she invites others who are suffering or have suffered from postpartum depression to get in touch in order to share their experiences.

https://feliciasimionphotography.com/wp/

Train to Trieste, by Domnica Radulescu

Domnica Radulescu’s 2008 Train to Trieste is an example of the genre dealing with life in communist Romania and emigrating to escape it, allowing comparisons to be made with both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective: other examples are Herta Müller’s The Passport, Roxanne Veletzos’s The Girl They Left Behind, and Ioana Pârvulescu’s short story ‘A Voice’.  Train to Trieste charts the life of Mona Maria Manoliu as she grows up in Romania, moves to Chicago in her twenties, then in a short final section returns to Romania two decades later to seek answers to old questions – and receives a remarkable surprise.

Living in Bucharest with her parents, teenage Mona spends her holidays in the Carpathian city of Brașov with her aunt, uncle and cousins, and at the age of 17, in 1977, falls in love with the enigmatic and older Mihai, whom she sees on her visits.  He disapproves of her anti-regime sentiments, and starts wearing a leather jacket, a garment favoured by the Securitate; then she is warned by another woman to be careful of him as he has links to the secret police.  She wonders to what extent she can trust him.

Her father, a university lecturer, is part of a dissident group, which makes life increasingly difficult for him, and for Mona, as family members too are treated with suspicion.  People are having ‘accidents’ in the street, her father is arrested and beaten, then demoted, and she herself is routinely followed and has a frightening encounter with a menacing government goon.  Following her love for literature she uses the British and American libraries in Bucharest, further casting her loyalty in doubt.

In her early twenties life has become so difficult that Mona’s family decide she should leave Romania.  She escapes via Belgrade to Trieste, then on to Chicago as part of a sponsorship programme, helped by incredibly kind and selfless people along the way.  Her journey to Chicago mirrors that of Radulescu’s own in 1983, and is a similar trajectory to Veletzos, who was born in Bucharest and moved to California as a young woman.  Mona does not say goodbye to Mihai, but he had been such a significant part of her life that she is shocked to hear later that he was killed on Christmas Day 1989, shot by a random bullet in the street.

In Chicago Mona makes a life for herself, putting her Romanian past behind her.  She works hard, gets married, has children, gets divorced, takes degrees, her parents join her, she moves to Indiana to take a teaching job, Ceaușescu is overthrown, her beloved father dies.  She decides to visit Romania after a gap of twenty years, both vicariously for her father, who never really took to America and longed to return to the old country one last time, and on her own account, to find answers to nagging questions about the past.

Despite the book’s title she does not take the train to Trieste when leaving Romania because the chance of detection is too high, rather hitching a ride with an Italian in his little Fiat and passing as his wife.  On her return trip, though, she does take the train, but in the opposite direction.  Her visit enables her to clear up mysteries about her father, Mihai, other people in their circle, and her escape, in a lengthy and rather clumsily presented conversation with an old friend of Mihai’s.  The poignant ending promises the opening of a new chapter, and the final integration of her Romanian and American identities.

It is impossible to tell the extent to which we are reading a novel or autobiography, or something in between.  The early sections feel fictional, but once Mona moves to America the writing takes on the character of memoir; or perhaps it always had that character, but life under Ceaușescu was so strange it is bound to feel like fiction to an outsider.  She conveys the political situation and what everyday life was like in Bucharest and Brașov in the 1970s and ’80s, but the writing is particularly vivid when describing family life and the beauty of the Carpathians.

Mona is not impressed with post-Ceaușescu Romania, expressing the disappointment shared by those who, like her father, had opposed the communist regime, at how little had changed in the years following.  But while she has a good life in America, she also retains a certain ambivalence towards her adopted homeland.  This is symbolised in the references to food: the tastiness of Romanian home cooking versus the terrible quality of mass-produced food in the land of McDonald’s.

A key moment in the novel is writing a competition essay at the age of ten on why she loves her country.  Mona thinks about the melancholic longing expressed in the supposedly untranslatable word dor, a more profound emotion than nostalgia and part of the way Romanians define themselves.  Her essay conveys how she would feel should she lose her country by imagining the lost past she has heard about from her father (suitably edited for an official audience).  Sentiments clearly chiming with the judges, she wins first prize.  She may not think much about the word in America, but it is there, inside her.  In a sense, despite moving across the Atlantic she never leaves Romania at all.

Blandford’s Painting Book of National Costumes

At some point in the 1950s the London publisher Blandford issued a series of colouring books devoted to European national costume (North-West, Southern, Central, and South-East Europe).  Each country has a coloured picture of a couple in traditional dress on one page, accompanied by some text describing the costumes, and opposite it a black-and-white version of the same picture the reader can colour in.  The books are unpriced but my two examples have 2/- (10p) in pencil on the cover.

Book no. 4, South-East Europe, was illustrated by S Horne Shepherd.  It comprises Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Sardinia and Turkey.  The Romanian picture is unusual in having a child with the man and woman, most only featuring adults.  The descriptions are rich in stereotype – the Romanian girl likes to run about barefoot in summer, the Bulgarian man is armed to the teeth with a long dagger, a pair of old pistols and ‘an ancient flintlock muzzle loader.’  There is nothing political of course, and the map on the back of the fourth book is based on the 1938 configuration of countries, showing Germany as a single entity.

The emphasis is very much on the peasant picturesque and it seems unlikely that by the 1950s costumes like those depicted in the books would have been much seen outside festivals.  The drawings play to an agrarian image of life in Continental Europe which may have shaped the attitudes of British children but was removed from the reality.  They evoke a place of bucolic contentment where little girls run about barefoot; exotic and colourful in contrast to grey post-war Britain.